Tag: braves

Oh the sweet irony

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: Joel Embiid expresses disappointment at Knicks fans taking over the Sixers’ Wells Fargo Center during the Knicks’ playoff win

Fewer things in sports are as awe-inspiring as a stadium takeover.  It’s nigh impossible to get sports fans to ever come together and be in complete solidarity at home, much less take the act on the road, but there have been instances throughout the history of sport where the planets align, the stars are in the right position and people manage to get on the same page, and embark on taking over stadiums, be it their own, and even more rarely, someone else’s.

Once there was a year where the Braves were not good and the visiting Chicago Cubs were having a strong season.  I remember watching the game on television, and noticing that the crowd was particularly hot that night, where the usually apathetic Atlanta fans were cheering for every single and strikeout, and there was a lot of booing whenever the Cubs did anything good for themselves.  But reality came catching up and eventually the Cubs took the lead and cruised to a relatively easy victory, but not before chasing off Braves fans, basically taking over Turner Field, and I remember seeing one shot of a large group of fans in the nosebleeds unfurling a banner that said “Wrigley South.”

It was fucking embarrassing.

There was a stretch where the Pittsburgh Penguins systematically eliminated the Washington Capitals from the NHL playoffs for 800 years in a row.  The greatest player in the history of the game since Gretzky, Alexander Ovechkin for whatever reason, couldn’t lead a DC team over the Penguins, and there was one specific year where Penguins fans trekked down to DC and really rub it into the face of Caps fans, and although they didn’t take over the USAir MCI Verizon Whatever the fuck they call it Arena now, they definitely didn’t make haste in getting out of town after the Penguins eliminated the Caps yet again.

Partying in the streets, congregating all over DC’s numerous landmarks in Penguins gear, basically marking their territory all over the city; it was fucking embarrassing.

The poor Baltimore Orioles, there was a stretch where they were woefully bad year in and year out, and eventually word got out to just about every team off of I-95, and Camden Yards was invaded countless times.  The Phillies, Yankees and Red Sox have taken over their stadium a bunch of times, and even the Nationals down the street have gathered en masse in their lovely ballpark.  They’ve been proclaimed to be Yankee Stadium South and Fenway South more times than they should’ve been. 

I’ve actually been there for a Nationals take over and a Yankee takeover.  One man I spoke with explained to me that it was cheaper to drive his family of four down to Baltimore from New York, the cost of tickets, food and lodging, than it would’ve been for decent seats at Yankee Stadium.  That fact, as well as getting taken over as repeatedly as they have been: fucking embarrassing.

But circling back to the Phillies, there was one year in particular that stands out, where Phillies fans absolutely took the fuck over at Nationals Park for the season opener.  I remember reading about it in the aftermath, how a really popular Philly sports website arranged the whole thing, and exploited a ticketing snafu that gave large groups priority when purchasing tickets, and the result was a Nationals home game that was easily 65%+ Phillies fans, where all the home players were booed out of the building, and Roy Halladay absolutely shut them down.

I knew several friends who were at the game, and unsurprisingly, it was one of the worst game experiences they’d ever had.  All the same, it was, fucking embarrassing.

And as far as I’m concerned, Philly kind of reinvented the idea of stadium takeovers.  After Occupy Nationals Park, it became almost like something that Philly sports fans would do anywhere else they could get away with it.  As mentioned, they weren’t shy about pulling the same act on the Orioles, but they’ve also attempted it on the Baltimore Ravens in the seasons in which the Eagles had them on the road.

The New York and Pittsburgh sport scenes are a little more prideful to allow such to happen, but as the pattern seems to be, just like everyone in Westeros, everyone marches south.

Which brings us back to the original topic, it’s sweet irony at its finest that not only did a Philadelphia sports team get invaded, the players definitely noticed, as Joel Embiid took the time to “I love them but” and basically throw them under the bus for not showing up to support the team, in the playoffs no less, and allowing for all the Knicks fans to take over their home court.

After the NLDS choke against the Phillies last year, I basically threw in the towel and resigned that Philly definitely is a sports town worthy of respect, for the innovative culture and brand they’ve built where players want to throw themselves into moving traffic for the fans, but then they have to and act like shitty fairweather fans who clearly have taken the 76ers for granted, the Process for granted and have collectively prioritized Eagles football and Phillies baseball over their basketball franchise.

And getting the stuffing beat out of them by the Knicks, of all the teams in the league.  The Knicks haven’t been relevant since Patrick Ewing was still on team, and I don’t say that just to be snarky, in the footage I’d seen of the takeover, the #1 jersey still seen being worn by most of these fans, is #33 Ewing.

The Knicks suck, but the Sixers and the city of Philadelphia are allowing them and their fans to have a genuine W, before they’ll inevitably choke and make this whole playoff run feel all for naught.

How fucking embarrassing.

Sure would be nice if the Braves had Trevor Bauer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So the Braves’ best pitcher, Spencer Strider is probably toast for the year, and some of next year; UCL damage is usually the precursor to Tommy John surgery, and even if there’s no actual tear that all but necessitates it, it’s almost worse to be on the lookout, because in so many cases, they burn time trying to rest and rehab it, and then when they try and pitch with it months later and then get the tear, prompting the TJS, they’ve burned an extra few months in which the surgery and rehab process might already have begun.

Furthermore, the Braves’ second-best pitcher, Max Fried has started the season acting like he’s not in his contract year, with his piddly five innings pitched in two starts, allowing 11 runs and with an ERA of 18.00.  Surely it will have to get better as the season wears on, but his start isn’t inspiring confidence at the moment, and if not for the two “old guys” in Charlie Morton and Chris Sale, as well as their potent offense, the Braves most definitely wouldn’t be over .500 at this early juncture in the season.

That being said, I’m writing this a day removed from the Braves having gotten absolutely nuked by the Mets, 16-4.  In the absence of Spencer Strider, the Braves have already dipped into the minor leagues, calling up Allan Winans to start, and he did not perform very well, allowing six of the Mets’ aforementioned 16 runs, and was promptly sent back down to the minor leagues afterward.

And that’s just what the Braves do, and will continue to do throughout the season; rely on young, mostly untested talent, like Allan Winans and AJ Smith-Shawver or guys who benefited greatly from the Braves’ offensive output to mask their general mediocrity like Bryce Elder, none of whom I will feel at all at ease when watching at this state of their respective careers.

All, while Trevor Bauer still is hanging out somewhere in Arizona striking out Eric Sim 58 times a day for YouTube content, or jet-setting down to Mexico to pitch for the Locos Diablos Rojos Tacos or whatever the fuck they’re called, because MLB is colluding to blacklist him from the league because of alleged crimes that multiple active players in the game right now have had an actual history with themselves.

Yes, this is a hill that I’m willing to die on, because I firmly believe that there is no team in league that Trevor Bauer doesn’t make better immediately, and as much as it guaranteed will not happen, I really fucking wish it could be the Braves, who very obviously actually need him, yesterday.

Bauer’s arsenal actually comps very closely to Spencer Strider’s, starting with a big fastball that can hit the upper-90’s, a reliable slider, but also a curveball as well as a cutter.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful that as soon as Strider went down, quite literally pick up a wandering free agent who has almost the exact same arsenal and have him start in his place?  Yeah, that’s what I think too, but Braves gonna Barves, and stay behind the picket lines with their MLB brethren, thinking they’re too high and mighty for Trevor Bauer.

I see arguments on almost a daily basis about Bauer, and I understand there are a lot of fans who are concerned about the rumored other allegations that Bauer has yet to beat, and that they will rear their heads throughout the season, but to those concerns, I say so what?

Bauer has stated that aside from being willing to play for the league minimum, he would accept being cut without argument.  Let him join your roster, win 5-6 games, and if a court date or legal matter emerges in June, then cut him.  Then, dip into the minor leagues or B-squad and cross the bridge when you get there, but let Trevor Bauer be the bridge to get you to that point and let him win baseball games for you.

I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept for MLB squads to accept, but collusion is collusion because everyone is on board with the idea of blacklisting a currently innocent man, no matter the value and talent he’s capable of providing.  I like to imagine that behind the picket lines, there are numerous general managers sweating over wanting to pick up Trevor Bauer for their squads, but out of fear of breaking solidarity with the collusion, their hands are tied.

I retract what I said about how I believe someone will definitively pick him up, because it really is looking like Colin Kaepernick out there in baseball land, and no matter how clearly needed guys like Kaepernick and Bauer would be needed by many professional sporting clubs, the collusion is for real, and teams would rather suffer and take losses than risk crossing the pickets.

Finally, a sponsor patch I can get behind

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

See ya next time: Kansas City Royals announce a partnership with QT gas stations, including a sponsorship patch on all team jerseys

Sponsorship patches seemed inevitable in MLB, seeing as how sponsorships on jerseys have been pretty commonplace pretty much in every sport in every other country across the globe.  But America being ‘Murica, it was unsurprising that once they started coming to fruition, all the sponsors were all of these boring, homogenized, multi-million dollar entities that nobody has ever heard of, cared for or generated any sort of emotion other than ambivalence, indifference, or the need to make fun of them.

The New York Mets, of course, were one of the first ones to really mess things up by introducing a hilariously oversized patch that nobody is going to convince me probably didn’t mess up the performance of players, since they had this giant square of weighty fabric hanging off of their left sleeves, that they had to finally swallow their pride, admit my bad, and fix it.

Of course, the Atlanta Braves got into the action as well, seeing as how Braves Corporate™ loves money and will do absolutely literally anything if it meant pleasing shareholders or improving their portfolio.  And despite how amazing it would’ve been if it were something truly iconic to Atlanta like Coca-Cola, Delta, The Home Depot, or my personal favorite thing I would’ve marked out for, Waffle House, nope, had to be a boring-as-fuck bag of concrete Kwikrete instead.

But today, we have news of a partnership that truly makes me smile, from the satisfaction of it being a team I don’t dislike, a company I don’t dislike, and all of the positive associations I get from said company, and knowing two parties that I don’t dislike coming together to make business.  It’s like when you have two friends from separate circles meet, and they gel together well.

But the Kansas City Royals partnering up with QuikTrip is something that does bring me joy.  The Royals are one of those teams I can’t ever bring myself to dislike, and who could forget the 2014 and 2015 seasons when the Royals came close, and then succeeded on their redo.  They’ve always had players that I’ve generally liked* and they so rarely ever cross paths with the Braves, so there’s almost never any chance that I’d ever feel the need to root against them.

*except Melky Cabrera, that fat worthless fuck who went to the Royals after his putrid stint with the Braves, where he played the season at like 304 lbs. before losing a hundo when he joined the Royals and put up an MVP-type season

And then there’s QuikTrip, which actually has a lot of Georgia ties, with their food distribution centers, I have a lot of positive connotation when I think about them.  Often times with the cheap fuel, always open, decent food as far as gas station grub is concerned, and always with expedient and mostly friendly staff.  I often tend to favor a QT when given choices, and when I think of QT, I hold them in a positive regard.

So the Royals joining forces with QT, makes me pleased.  Especially, with them hilariously slapping a giant red and black QT logo onto the Royals jerseys which are a hard blue and white identity, which really begs the question on the importance of branding.   Like, if the name of the game is for the sponsor to really stand out, they couldn’t have picked a better team to partner up with than the Royals.  If they partnered with the Cardinals, Braves, or even the Diamondbacks, which are all markets that have QTs, their logo would blend in with all the other reds that those teams employ.

I don’t travel much anymore these days, and my baseball journeys are long past complete.  But I’d totally be down to go to Kansas City if they ever did a free Royals jersey giveaway night sponsored by QT, where they were giving away jerseys with the QT logo on them, because to my knowledge replica jerseys made by Nike/Fanatics don’t include sponsorships on them, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to buy any of the shitty replicas made by them these days anyway.

Either way, Royals + QT, and a bigass sponsorship patch on their blue-ass jerseys definitely piqued my interest, and I look forward to seeing Royals highlights throughout the upcoming season.  This is definitely my favorite sponsorship partnering there is in baseball, without any question.

The case for Trevor Bauer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m paying much attention to the baseball offseason other than the big name moves that are spoon-fed to me through mainstream media, but there’s one name that I’ve been very curious about to see what happens: Trevor Bauer.

Long story short, Bauer was accused of sexual assault, suspended by MLB, went to Japan to keep on pitching, eventually found innocent and legally exonerated, but remains unemployed, despite having put up a solid season in NPB and remaining in game-ready shape.

And today, Trevor Bauer has basically declared that he would play for free:*

For a team that doesn’t want to commit multi years, hundreds of millions of dollars, or many elite prospects for a Cy Young award winner, they could sign me for the league minimum and pay 0 incremental dollars over what they have to pay to that roster spot anyway. Just another option for teams that want to win and don’t want to break the bank.

*League minimum, last time I checked was $725K which is a ton of money, but largely negligible as office supplies as far as a Major League Baseball organization is concerned

It’s obvious at this point, Bauer is grasping at straws for a job, and I’m sure that if were able to secure one, he’d probably fairly easily be able to re-establish his value and get back to Major League fuck-you money again, but it’s evident that there’s some league-wide black balling of Trevor Bauer, despite the fact that legally he’s in the clear.  Sure, there are other accusers and probably civil suit(s) somewhere in the background, but by and large we still have a man that has been found guilty of nothing, but is still being punished by today’s societal standards that perception is reality.

When I was live-or-die by the Braves on a daily basis, I’d probably be in support of the blackballing of Bauer here; the Atlanta Braves must remain pure and respectable and the high standard of integrity that can only come with wearing The A.  But I’m not that guy anymore, and I am still a Braves, fan, for lack of a better term, albeit a shitty one that probably hates the team more Taylor Swift fans love Taylor Swift, and I’m tired of seeing the Braves overachieve throughout the regular season and flop in the postseason like it were the 90s again.

Yes, I know we’re just three years removed from the Braves being World Series champions, but with teams this talented, expectations this high, and a contention window wide open, a team has to strike while the iron is hot, and I feel that the Braves are squandering their chances by being so Braves-ey, and constantly thinking they’ll continue to get overachieving performances out of their roster for the rest of this contention window.  The lack of depth in starting pitching has been exposed over the last two years, and the team shit the bed in free agency this off-season in addressing this need, while fans continue to sing the praises of general manager Alex Anthopolous as if already won the next World Series.

I would much, much, much rather see Trevor Bauer take the hill in a playoff game over Bryce Elder, or even a late-season tired Spencer Strider, whom both have shown the tendency to run out of gas by the time the playoffs start over the last two years.  And it would be nice to have a reliable starting option in the wings if there’s another late-season Max Fried injury, or Charlie Morton’s 40-year old arm starts to go, or it turns out that Ian Anderson can’t bounce back from injury or that any of the fringe starters they got are better served in the bullpen.

Trevor Bauer got knocked around when he first got to Japan, but he still compiled a solid overall season in the land of the #1 ranked baseball nation on the planet, where he had a 2.76 ERA and 130 strikeouts in as many innings, a solid  9.0 K/9.  He would slot into the top-2 of any starting five in baseball, and it would literally cost any team the same cost as it would to pay the 26th man on the roster, whose primary job will be the late-inning pinch runner for the team’s veterans.

There’s absolutely little more than the Braves, and their stat-geek fans love, more than saving money, and a willingness to take the league minimum, is about as big of a money savings as there possibly is.  Nobody does what Trevor Bauer did, because the MLBPA won’t let them, but seeing as how Bauer was blacklisted, he’s obviously not a part of it anymore because he’s not actually employed by MLB at the moment, so here we are – an ace-caliber pitcher showing his hand and telling the world that he’s willing to play for peanuts so that he can re-establish himself in Major League Baseball.

And just to put the kibosh on the perception that the Braves are too high and mighty to pick up an innocent miscreant like Trevor Bauer, let me remind Braves fans of some of the guys in franchise history who were actually guilty of crimes against women:

  • 1995, beloved skipper Bobby Cox was arrested on assault charges against his wife
  • 1997, Chipper Jones revealed to have had extramarital affair with a Hooters waitress; also impregnating her
  • 2012, Andruw Jones is arrested on assault charges against his wife
  • 2021, Marcell Ozuna is arrested on assault charges against his girlfriend

So let’s not act like the Braves, or Major League Baseball is some holy organization where saints play.  Yes, Trevor Bauer is kind of an arrogant prick, is a super bro on his socials, but he’s legally free and clear, despite previous accusations.  He’s an obvious upgrade to any team’s starting rotation, and he would cost a team practically nothing, so let’s not duck the obvious fact that he’s getting the Colin Kaepernick treatment here.

But make no mistake, someone will bite eventually.  MLB is no NFL, where there are (allegedly) numerous QB options “better than” Kaepernick, MLB teams always need pitching help, and one team will bite eventually.  Whether it’s two weeks left in Spring Training, or a July acquisition after watching him pitch in the independents or at a private showcase, baseball teams always need pitching, and a cheap and free and clear pitcher of Trevor Bauer’s capabilities will not go unemployed all year long.  But it will be a one-season deal, because once he takes an MLB mound again and proves he still can get the job done, he’ll be back to making millions in 2025.

I know it’s not going to be the Braves, because they’re too high and mighty on their own brand and reputation, but I would be absolutely stoked as a fan who wants to win if it were.  I would love to see the Braves meet the Dodgers in the NLCS, and a very motivated Trevor Bauer marches into Dodger Stadium and fires a statement shutdown performance against the organization that let him hang out to dry.

Someone else is definitely going to get the bargain of the century, when they blink first and sign Trevor Bauer, and I’ll be waiting to harvest my e-cred for when I’m right about this layup of a prediction.

The Braves are the High Expectations Asian Dad of MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even though I don’t pay nearly as much attention to baseball as much as I used to, it can’t be said that I don’t know the Atlanta Braves.  Going into the offseason it was painfully obvious what the team’s needs were, which was pitching, pitching, pitching and moar pitching, because as the Braves were painfully exploited, their lack of pitching absolutely blew up in their face once the playoffs began.

They might have had the greatest offense in a century, and even with Ronald Acuña pulling a disappearing act in the playoffs, you can’t win baseball games if you can’t prevent the other team from scoring more runs than you do.

But in spite of the very obvious glaring need, I what was going to happen to the Braves before the offseason even really began.  Their name would be thrown into the hat on just about every notable starting pitching candidate, but one-by-one, they would lose in every single sweepstakes, usually because the Braves were too cheap, or unwilling to outbid any competitive suitors in terms of money or trade chips.  And once all the major names were off the board, the Braves would then land on picking up a starting pitcher that was too old, coming off injury/down year, both, or some other reason that made them available to the Braves and not all the other teams who are willing to dole out money like white people raising taxes on minorities.

And the Braves front office would pat themselves on the back and applaud themselves for not going over-budget, not locking themselves to a free agent contract that has any modicum of chance of being labeled a colossal bust, and then the contingent of Barves fans who believe Alex Anthopolous or any of the other Braves’ front office stooges are incapable of making bad business decisions with applaud them to, and the Braves will go into 2024, not a terrible team, but not exactly the world beaters that are expected to compete for the World Series.

Sure enough, that’s pretty much exactly what happened this off-season, and absolutely nothing that has transpired throughout the entire baseball winter has been a surprise to me, as it pertains to the Atlanta Braves.

To quickly summarize, the Braves’ name was associated to quality pitchers like Aaron Nola, Sonny Gray, Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease and even lol, Shohei Ohtani.  Nola used the Braves to leverage moar money before re-signing with the Phillies.  Sonny Gray signed a fairly reasonable deal with the St. Louis Cardinals so it stands to believe the Braves probably low-balled him and he joined a rebuilding Cards squad instead.  Dylan Cease talks appear to have evaporated for the time being, so the Braves probably were not willing to acquiesce on whatever the White Sox wanted from them, and not only did the Dodgers naturally win the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, days later they managed to swipe Tyler Glasnow from the Rays and secure him for several years, before doing the same thing with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, building a monster super squad in the process.

So with one part of my predicted Braves offseason complete, the second part came to fruition when the Braves traded one of their better prospects, Vaughn Grissom, to the Boston Red Sox for, Chris Sale.

A decade ago, landing Chris Sale would’ve been a boon, because he was easily one of the best pitchers in the game in the 2010’s decade.  But here’s a guy that almost as soon as he turned 30 years old, fell off a cliff.  His numbers started plummeting, he blew out his arm and required Tommy John Surgery, and has been battling a parade of random injuries since then.  He did manage to pitch over 100 innings last season, but to a far less effective 4.30 ERA than when he was still good at baseball.  His strikeout rates were still decent, but he was getting hammered when people did connect, allowing 15 homers in his limited duties.

The Braves landing Chris Sale at the expense of a prospect the caliber of Vaughn Grissom, I told my friend, was about the most Braves transaction ever, because it truly was.  They biffed on all of the available high-tier starting pitching options, and then settled on getting a high-risk, formerly-good player, because of cost, and with a litany of hopes and dreams attached that he can bounce back to being the dominant force he was throughout the 2010’s, a decade later and through tons of injuries.

And to make matters worse, they locked themselves into this union by extending him for two more years at $38 million, and I’m too lazy to look up the specifics, prior to this, they were only on the hook for around $500k of his 2024 salary, while the Red Sox had to pay the rest, but I’m assuming that that’s no longer the case with a new contract in tow.

But basically, the modus operandi of the Atlanta Braves is always avoid the risk of high-cost assets, even if means the team as a whole is hampered by mediocre alternatives.  They will never splurge on top-tier talent, and always pick up guys who are coming off of down years, injuries, or assumed to just be needing “a change of scenery.”  The Braves always seem to think they can always operate by getting okay talent and that they’ll magically outperform their expectations because they’re playing for the high and mighty Atlanta Braves, which is fine if you went into every single year with no aspirations other than not sucking.

They’re basically the High-Expectations Asian Dad of baseball, where they’re always banking on everyone to outperform their peripherals and history, and are full of nothing but loathing disappointment if and when they don’t succeed.

The Braves haven’t really played with their balls out since Ted Turner unloaded the team to Liberty Media, and Braves Corporate hasn’t shown that they don’t care about on-field results as much as they care about appeasing the shareholders, so I guess if that’s their goal, then they’re doing a bang-up job of being above average.

Seriously though, Chris Sale and Jarred Kelenic aren’t going to fix the team and get them any closer to getting over the hurdle of the October Phillies or any other playoff team they run into, should they even make the playoffs in 2024.  As good as Spencer Strider has been, it’s been two straight Octobers in which he’s faltered, Charlie Morton isn’t getting any younger, Chris Sale is still a gigantic question mark on what we’re going to get from an older, busted up version, and Max Fried might be the only reliable pitcher the team has, and only because it’s his walk year, and he’s going to be pitching for his next contract.

Not very promising going into 2024, but then again, I’m not convinced that Braves Corporate really cares about the team’s success as long as the annual report continues to show high profits.  But as much as the Braves have sucked throughout yet another offseason, there’s always a measure of satisfaction at knowing that I’m still usually right when it comes to matters pertaining to the Braves being the Barves, and being right always feels good.

Not my MiLB logo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently I missed this way back from September: but Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball have agreed to change the official logo of Minor League Baseball

And of course this wouldn’t be a post if I didn’t, but I absolutely hate it, thanks.

Fewer things are a sign of mediocrity and spinning wheels like a logo rebranding.  This was not a case like the Cleveland Indians really needing to get rid of a horrifically racist mascot, this was the case of some bored corporate stooges looking for things that weren’t broken and decided to fix them anyway, to justify their existences.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the previous MiLB logo.  It was subtle, it was understandable, and most importantly, it was just different enough to where the shape and brand positioning of it was always consistent to MLB standards, but the visual identity of the icon itself was different enough for those looking to understand that this was Minor League and not the MLB icon that any sports fan or casual could understand.

In one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken with my mom, I’m wearing the old MiLB logo generic shirt.

Now this new crappy logo is basically identical to the MLB logo, except the batter is aligned to the left, and instead of a baseball coming towards the batter, it now looks like the batter has sat looking at four pitches that are now past him, and considering the escalating rate of strikeouts throughout the last half-century, the guy in the logo has probably struck-out, as much as the logo itself does in my opinion.

I hate to say it, but there are a lot of baseball fans that aren’t particularly intelligent.  The Gwinnett Braves used the excuse that there were people that actually managed to confuse tickets for G-Braves tickets for tickets for the Atlanta Braves, which I didn’t think was really a believable excuse, but I’m also not going to pretend like baseball fans are always the smartest people in the world either.  This new logo is going to 100% confuse people into thinking they’re going to Major League games and buying Major League apparel, but perhaps that really is the end game, and I’m just being hyper critical of a tactic that I think is petty, but is really some corporate shills really living in 2050 and playing chess.

And I don’t understand why they’ve put a color palette behind it, especially of two shades of blue.  MLB logos, especially on apparel, namely baseball caps, often times already ditch their own color palette and adopt the primary and secondary colors of the team, or they just go reverse white, as not to compete with the colors of the teams, especially ones that don’t utilize the navy and red palette of the MLB logo.  This Carolina/Dook blue combo logo just seems odd and uncharacteristic to professional baseball in general, where it seems like the vast majority of teams utilize shades of red, at all levels of the game.  For all the teams like the Blue Rocks or the Stone Crabs or the Pelicans that utilize shades of blue, there are teams like the Redbirds, Nuts, Crawdads and much more where adding a logo of blues into their branding is more like shoehorning a horse’s hoof into a toddler’s shoe.

Either way, I am very much not a fan of the new MiLB logo.  It is uncreative, homogenized, convoluted, and was something that never needed to be updated in the first place.  Not that I’m going to many baseball games at all these days, but a team’s branding is going to have to work just a little bit harder to make me decide to impulsively drop some cash on any team merch if it’s going to have this little blue turd of a brand slapped onto it.

There may be four stars on the logo, but if it were up to me, it would have none.

Whew. Let’s talk about Shohei Ohtani

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The whew in the title has nothing to do with any sort of relief I may be feeling that I do not have to shave my balls, because anyone with a brain knew that there was no chance in hell that Shohei Ohtani was going to sign with the Atlanta Braves.  I would’ve felt comfortable betting my house that Ohtani wasn’t going to sign with the Braves, frankly.  The whew in the title really is just in regards to how much there is to unpack, now that the free agent of the millennium has finally been signed and taken off the table and the rest of MLB can move on with its tumultuous life.

It actually happened a few days ago, and I just didn’t have the opportunity to sit down and put all my knee-jerk reactions down to text, but for those who missed it, uber-star Shohei Ohtani ended his not-so silent quest for a free agent contract, and has chosen to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, up the I-5 from Anaheim, at an earth-shattering $700 million dollars over the next ten years.

This wasn’t just the most expensive contract in Major League Baseball history, this is supposedly the biggest professional athlete contract in all sports’ histories, surpassing even guys like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo much less Aaron Judge, Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer.  Do the math, and it’s a guy who’s going to be getting paid $70 million dollars a year to play a children’s game.

And the thing is, most people haven’t bothered to care or learn, but Ohtani’s ability to pitch is completely off the table until like 2025, as he will be recovering from major elbow surgery over the span of now until most of 2024.  The Dodgers knew this, and they still were comfortable with giving him the biggest contract in history; he’s a remarkable hitter no doubt, but I can think of 2-3 guys I’d have pursued alternatively instead of dropping $700M on someone whom I’ll only be getting half their skillset for the start of the contract.

Whatever though, the goose chase is over, and Ohtani is going to be a Dodger for the next decade, and the rest of MLB fanbases can bemoan the rich getting richer, as the Dodgers pick up yet another marquee free agent, and their payroll looks to balloon way past what the Mets just set the bar to the year prior.  Frankly I’m not surprised that he went to the Dodgers, because as much as I knew he wasn’t going to land on the Braves, I figured he was probably either going to stay with the Angels, or go to the Dodgers or the Phillies, because those seem to be the only two teams that players actively want to end up going to these days.  And in spite of some gallant efforts by the Toronto Blue Jays, I’m sure Ohtani’s camp reminded him of the colossal pain in the ass that playing in Canada is like with all the constant customs hangups as well as Canada’s high taxes for services that he’d probably never use.

The thing is, after the breaking news of Ohtani’s signing occurred, what I really was the most curious about was the minute details of the contract, namely opt-out clauses as well as my favorite footnote in sport contracts, deferred monies.  At first, it was really hush-hush, leading people to believe that he was just going to get $70M a year, plain and simple, but baseball contracts are never plain and simple, and are astounding when they are.

When the news first came out, none of these details were made available, but ironically in the time between breaking news to when I could actually have some time to write about it, the things I cared about emerged, and hoo boy, are they some really interesting and unprecedented things.

Continue reading “Whew. Let’s talk about Shohei Ohtani” →